Williams did not run KERS on Rubens Barrichello’s car today after experiencing more problems with it yesterday. However they still caused two stoppages – one shortly before the lunch break and another half an hour before the test was due to end.

Renault split their running between Vitaly Petrov and Nick Heidfeld. The German driver back in the car after his Tuesday running was cut short as he was unwell.

Lotus also ran two drivers today, with Heikki Kovalainen taking over from Jarno Trulli. But they were delayed by reliability problems again, and further frustrated when a replacement radiator they had flown in broke during transit.

Not really…that was a super low fuel run…and the reporters in the know have said sauber and torro rosso are right up there with renault, Mclaren, Mercedes: 5 teams which we will not be sure of their outright pace for a while yet, not till after the checkered flag in Melbourne…

If the Red Bull went out and did a super low fuel lap on fast tyres, I think they may get into the high 1.20s…we will wait and see in expectation! But hats off to Sauber, clearly they have a good start of season car!

Well ,they seem to have just about as much reliability issues as Team Lotus, Torro Rosso, Sauber and Williams. But speed is not really there, so they might be making up the back with McLAren, Mercedes and HRT!

Sauber was hidding us a REAL something, but before getting too exited we have to remember last season sauber’s testing. But in my case, i feel this time is lightly different from last season.
And don’t forget Perez (of course Kamui will rock-on-track), keep an eye on perez.

Dontmisunderstandme -> RedBull and Ferrary are ahead of all, just i expected sauber near the bottom, this put them back to fight with mercedes, williams and renault whom havent show us what they got, but cant be far better from sauber’s.

im genuinley looking forward to tomorrow, to see if HRT are there or not. HRT is the F1 equivalent to an episode of Lost, so many questions that need answering that only lead to more questions. Will they be there? will it be this years car? will it still have filled the “This is a cool spot” advert space? Sooo many questions.

This is interesting. Perez setting the fastest time says more about the rest of teams than it does about Sauber. Definitely this is a pure qualifying try and makes one wonder how much faster Red Bull and Ferrari really is..

That settles it then, Kobayashi to win the Championship. Nah the Sauber isn’t exactly going to be the fastest car after being average all the other days is it..I doubt the true potential of most other teams has been shown yet.

Perez looks like a very good driver to have in that car, I am looking forward to seeing him racing. If that Sauber is half up to the job they will be a wonder to watch again this year.

I saw Esteban Gutierrez (did I spell that right?) is going states side now. I hope he gets back as well, he looks very good as well.
Bring on the Mexican GP rumours. At least Austin is relatively close by!

Regardless, even if Sauber surprise some in testing, even if they start the season stronger than most expect, they won’t be able to keep up to the pace of development throughout the season of several top teams on the grid. Not to mention their driver pairing is far weaker than several of the teams’. A one-off lap in testing is night and day different from racing in anger.

Well, this is one of the few teams that actually have the ressources in house to do that kind of development.
So compared to the FI, Williams, STR, Lotus and possibly Mercedes they might have a small advantage in developments.

“Technical director James Key said this was the first time the team had run the car on a low fuel load and that Perez “did a good and controlled set of laps, setting a time of 1:22.042 minutes on soft tyres and 1:21.761 on the super-soft compound”.”